Burning down the house: why the debate over Paris is Burning rages on

Jennie Livingston’s landmark film on New York’s voguing scene helped shine a light on one of the most influential subcultures, but it also saw its creator accused of wanton voyeurism. On the eve of a controversial screening, is Paris Burnt?

Burning down the house: why the debate over Paris is Burning rages on

Jennie Livingston’s landmark film on New York’s voguing scene helped shine a light on one of the most influential subcultures, but it also saw its creator accused of wanton voyeurism. On the eve of a controversial screening, is Paris Burnt?

Few documentaries can claim to have sparked as much discussion and controversy as Jennie Livingston’s debut Paris is Burning (1991), the vibrant time capsule of New York’s ballroom subculture in the 80s. Seven years in the making, this stylish, poignant film followed African American and Hispanic gay men, drag queens and transgender women as they compete in simultaneously fierce and fun competitions involving fashion runways and vogue dancing battles, while sporting styles like Butch Queen, Town and Country and Luscious Body. Many of the contestants vying for trophies represent “Houses” (Pendavis, Extravaganza, LaBeija) which serve as surrogate families and social groups for a predominantly youthful community largely ostracised from mainstream society.

The film alternates between colourful ballroom sequences – an acknowledged influence on current hit show RuPaul’s Drag Race – and candid interviews with key scene figures, who address an off-camera Livingston on complex subjects including class; race and racism; wealth; gender orientation; and beauty standards. It’s also endlessly quotable, with characters dispensing terminology that’s since passed into popular parlance. Explaining the concept of ‘shade’, one of the film’s stars, Dorian Corey, purrs memorably: “I don’t have to tell you you’re ugly … I don’t have to tell you because you know you’re ugly. That’s shade.” Its lexical influence is legion. As Daily Dot writer Mary Emily O’Hara pointed out: “If you’ve ever used words like ‘fierce’ or ‘shady’ or commented ‘yassss queen’ or ‘work’ on a cute Instagram pic, you’ve been speaking the language of the ball scene – likely, without ever realising where it came from.”

The ballroom scene inspired Madonna’s Vogue, while the film helped to spotlight the work of choreographer Willi Ninja, and won the grand jury prize at the 1991 Sundance film festival. It later went on to commercial success after being picked up for distribution by Miramax. All was not smooth sailing, however. Critics including feminist scholar bell hooks questioned whether Livingston – a middle-class, white, genderqueer lesbian – was playing the role of voyeur; an enabler of cultural appropriation. Meanwhile, a 1993 New York Times article entitled Paris Has Burned reported that several of the performers, feeling that they’d missed out on the wealth generated by the film, wished to sue for a share of its profits. One, Paris DuPree, sought $40m in compensation. (The film grossed $3,779,620 domestically against a budget of roughly $500,000: excellent numbers for a documentary, but hardly blockbuster figures.)

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Although all dropped their claims after their attorneys confirmed that they had signed standard release forms, the producers distributed approximately $55,000 among 13 participants: an unusual, though not unprecedented, move for a documentary. “The journalistic ethic says you should not pay them,” Livingston told the New York Times. “On the other hand, these people are giving us their lives! How do you put a price on that?” Still, rumours persisted that Livingston had got rich off the backs of others, and that she was living in luxury in a pad next to Calvin Klein’s on Long Island. Ball-walker Kevin Omni Burros, who appeared briefly in the film, has suggested that Livingston “came in and fooled everybody. She claimed she was doing a thesis.”

I met Livingston at a small cafe near her Brooklyn home recently, and she was quick to rebuke such claims: “I didn’t go to film school. I don’t have a film education, and I never suggested that I did. I took one summer class, and I shot that one ball which is not in the finished film. I never said ‘Babe, I’m gonna make you a star.’ I went in and said, ‘I’m interested, will you talk to me?’ I honestly, to this day, do not believe that anybody who signed those release forms was incapable of understanding what it meant, nobody was illiterate; some people were college educated. Plus, most of the people in the film had spent a lot of time with me before the bulk of the footage got shot.”

I never said ‘Babe, I’m gonna make you a star.’ I went in and said, ‘I’m interested, will you talk to me?’

Jennie Livingston

Yet Livingston had other things on her plate: we were speaking in the aftermath of the latest controversy surrounding the film, which erupted when Brooklyn non-profit BRIC scheduled a special screening of the film on 26 June in Prospect Park, and failed to include any trans and queer people of colour (TQPOC) from New York’s current ball community, or performers from the film in the line-up. Instead, the only special guest – alongside Livingston – was Le Tigre’s JD Samson, a white, lesbian and genderqueer musician who has no connection to the ball scene. TQPOC began leaving (now deleted) comments on the event’s Facebook page, lambasting BRIC and Livingston.

Then a change.org petition was launched by the collective Paris is Burnt. It called for the cancellation of the event, blasted the film as an “anthropological foray into the lives of low-income TQPOC ballroom members”, and issued a list of demands to both the organisers and Livingston. The petition also drew a connection between the event’s all-white line-up and the rapid recent gentrification of Brooklyn: (“This is the appropriation of our narratives for the sake of entertaining a gentrifying, majority white audience that seeks to consume us and call it paying homage.”)

It’s not hard to see why the initial line-up – thoughtless, at best – provoked such a strong response. For one, news recently broke that six trans women of colour had been murdered in the space of less than two months in early 2015: a harsh reminder, alongside the still-unsolved murder of Venus Xtravaganza, one of the film’s key performers, of the disproportionately high rates of violence facing the transgender community, and the lack of appropriate response from law enforcement. Moreover, we live in an era where the absence of gatekeepers on social media allows marginalised and previously silenced groups the right to articulate their feelings unfiltered. This has resulted in a groundswell of heartening and effective activism (consider #blacklivesmatter). Clearly, to the 1,000-plus people who signed the petition – especially those predisposed to the idea that Livingston had exploited and profited from the ball community – the erasure of TQPOC from the event felt like a gratuitous salting of old wounds. It also sits in a climate of seemingly unceasing violence against black bodies from Charleston to McKinney; and when cultural appropriation is becoming increasingly egregious (Tom Hanks’s risible, N-word spouting rapper son Chet Haze, and Rachel Dolezal’s stunning neo-blackface routine are just the latest examples.)

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In response, Livingston issued two statements on Facebook, the second of which read, in part: “Thank you for reminding me the extent to which I need to keep listening deeply and acting as a visible and supportive ally to TQPOC people and struggles. I thank those of you who reached out to me during this time, and I thank those of you whose critiques encourage me to continue to interrogate, examine, and also celebrate my own practice as a filmmaker, both past and present.”

BRIC also updated the line-up to include introductions by Livingston alongside stars Junior LaBeija and Dr Sol Williams Pendavis (both of whom Livingston tells me she email-invited back in February, but failed to follow up on.) Before the screening, fellow Paris is Burning cast members Grandfather Hector Xtravaganza and Jose Disla Xtravaganza will present a Houses United Ball which will feature members of a number of Houses. Samson dropped out.

Before we end our chat, Livingston – who has been working on her latest film Earth Camp One for a decade – admits to a sense of frustration about some of the criticism she has received, especially given that Paris is Burning was made at a time when she was, in her words, “up against an entire establishment of people who didn’t want you as a woman making a film, didn’t want to see queer images, and didn’t want to give you the money, which is still an issue for women film-makers and queer film-makers”. Livingston also mentions a benefit she did last year alongside Junior LaBeija which raised $30,000 for the Ali Forney Center.

As suggested by the eye-catching names dotting the revamped line-up, the ballroom scene is going strong. One of its leading lights is dancer Jamel Prodigy (AKA Derek Auguste), who has collaborated as a creative consultant with musical acts including FKA twigs. “I love working with her,” he tells me. “She appreciates the scene as an artist. She’s not trying to say she’s the ‘mother of vogue’ – like Madonna did – before moving on to the next thing. Instead of seeing our world merely as a source of fascination, she says: ‘I’m going to make it a part of my art, and I’m still learning.’”

Prodigy considers Livingston’s film – which he first saw in 1997 – as a foundational text. “I think it’s great, and very insightful,” he says. Yet he’s equally keen to point out to new viewers that Paris is Burning is not where the story finishes.

“Jennie’s film ended with a sad undertone, and I think our message is much more powerful than the impression that she left. We are an inspirational, creative and resilient community. This is 24 years later. There have been advancements in [treating] HIV, to which a lot of characters from the scene, and Jennie’s film [including Corey, Willi Ninja, and Jamel’s one-time House mother Octavia Saint-Laurent] succumbed. We’re all over the media. If it wasn’t for ballroom, there would be no Laverne Cox or [transgender activist and dancer] Giselle Xtravangza. It’s time to show that we have prevailed. It’s time to show that it’s not a sad story.” He mentions in passing Wolfgang Busch’s unofficial 2006 follow-up How Do I Look?, but says: “I don’t think it did justice in terms of including the point of view of the community.”

MikeQ: ballroom producer and DJ. Photograph: PR

Another fan of Paris is Burning is New Jersey ballroom DJ, MikeQ, who’s concerned that the growing globalisation and popularity of the subculture might see it drifting from its roots. “A lot of producers who don’t know anything about the scene are starting to make the ‘ballroom sound’ – they’re completely not making ballroom music, but you can tell that’s what they’re going for,” he says. “You have all of these people who are starting their own balls in different countries and states – which is cool – but they don’t know anybody who is a long-time scene presence.”

“I saw a clip of a ball in Russia. They were voguing but the music was wrong, the MC-ing was wrong, and everybody was sitting around watching quietly. That’s not how ballroom is.” He pauses.

“I can see in the future if a TV show came out about ballroom and the producers went to somebody who just found out about it, rather than a legend that’s been in the scene … I could see us being erased from that.”

In recent times MikeQ has contributed to the music for the work-in-progress film Gesture, a collaborative project between Swedish artist Sara Jordenö and dancer/activist Twiggy Pucci Garcon about NYC’s Kiki Scene, “a ‘society within a society’ created and governed by LGBTQ youth of color, where ‘Mother’ is on the top of the hierarchy and ‘cunt’ is the highest form of praise.”

Another contemporary work is Elegance Bratton’s Pier Kids: The Life, a Kickstarter-funded documentary about the homeless gay and transgender youth who call the Christopher Street Pier home. These types of grass-roots projects, in tandem with the now-canonical – if permanently controversial – Paris is Burning, are surely the types of artistic endeavours which can help change perceptions and militate against such erasure.

Paris is Burning plays at Celebrate Brooklyn! in Prospect Park on 26 June